Archive for Somatic Exercises
Somatics Exercises for Your Neck and Shoulders
Posted by: | CommentsNovel somatics exercises help you reduce your muscle stiffness the way nature intended. In nature, all healthy vertebrate animals use the process of a pandiculation to get their muscles loose and ready for the day.
As we age, most of us have forgotten this lost art of pandiculating. In fact, we all did it in our mother’s womb. If you’ve forgotten how to pandiculate, then it’s likely your muscles are getting stiffer as you age. You don’t feel as spry as you used to.
You can change all of that in an instant since this is a cortical brain response. Your brain is waiting for you to pandiculate so it can send the necessary chemicals of relaxation to the areas you target with your intention.
Brain plasticity or the ability to change your brain allows you to change the feelings of your muscles from stiffness to mobility. When you’re more mobile, you’re less likely to hold your stress… and you’ll be able to sleep even better.
Give these somatics exercises for your neck and shoulders a try and feel for yourself what all the healthy animals already know.
Letting Go of Muscle Tightness
Posted by: | CommentsA number of people have been telling me how they try to let go of their muscular tightness, discomforts or pain by either breathing into it, visualizing or using positive mantras.
These methods can be quite useful but we may not always be successful with these approaches.
Your brain is set up to use the natural process of a pandiculation by using Somatics Exercises. These unique exercises send a message from your brain’s cortex through the spinal cord and out to the muscle or muscles which need to let go.
If you practice Somatics, you may be aware how to use the simple 3 step process by actually contracting your muscles followed by the s-l-o-w release and pausing to sense the effect.
When you feel or sense the release of yourself letting go, you are in a state of learning and reminding your nervous system as to the “how to” of actually letting go.
We often try to deal with accumulated stress, tightness or pain by just breathing into it. This works “if” you already know how to let go in that particular area of your body.
Using your mind to communicate with the muscles, reminds them of their function, and serves to creates a memory pattern which reinforces the learning of how to let go.
You are actively creating and releasing the chemicals of relaxation into your body through the 3 step process of a pandiculation which you can use any time you feel the need.
In other words, you’re also creating a reservoir of the feel good chemicals of relaxation which you can bank on.
The more you practice with the 3 simple steps, the more easily you can tap into your natural resource of turning off stress, tightness, discomfort and pain.
Then once you have the hang of it, and your muscles know and remember how to let go, then breathing, visualizing and following through with your intentions and mantras will move you up a notch in realizing your healthy lifestyle.
Letting go is easy once you know how… you can join us on Saturday, August 14th for a live webinar on how to use the P word to get your muscles to let go in your legs, hips, knees, ankles and feet.
World Cup and Recreational Soccer Injuries
Posted by: | CommentsMy beloved beautiful game is center at the world’s stage and yet I continue to see how many athletes didn’t make the competition on account of injuries or are cramping on the field. These injuries happen in the course of a game and in training. 
In the recreational side of soccer, did you know that nearly 570,000 athletes were injured playing soccer in 2009?
While many athletes continue to “stretch” as a means of prevention and recovery many of their attempts are ill-fated and actually compound their problems. New research is out which you can use to benefit yourself.
As a self-proclaimed, Divorce Counselor for Stretching, there exists a more natural way to lengthen your muscles and have them functioning for your peak performance.
Your brain, if you will, is the big muscle which sends messages to your muscles to keep them contracted or relaxed at specific rates of contraction.
By pushing your muscles to lengthen, they actually re-contract.
It’s poignant to watch a calf muscle or hamstring get “pulled” in the course of a game and watch the trainers run onto the field and spray the muscles with the “secret” spray or forcefully try to lengthen the muscle in the opposite direction to gain length.
The obvious signal is the muscle is being shortened. This is what’s happening when you are experiencing a cramp or muscle spasm.
By pushing the muscle, when say your calf is cramping, you’re violating the stretch reflex. No worries… you won’t get a ticket for it. This reflex is what keeps the muscles contracting and set at certain levels. By forcing or pushing muscles into length, it actually recontracts and gets shorter afterwards. This is what they found out about back in 1936.
This protective mechanism is a good thing so your muscles don’t tear. This reflex can be readjusted by the brain instead of using force. If you push it, your muscles will be forced into length but the rate of contraction will continue and can be elevated so that your stiffness remains for longer periods of time.
Instead of trying to lengthen the muscle, the brain can be used to do what is clearly happening in the moment. The cramp is a muscle shortening to protect itself. So shortening it, is what is you can do in order for the muscle to allow itself to lengthen back and reset it’s level of contraction.
Now this may seem counterintuitive. Once you get the hang of a simple 3 step process, you’ll be able to use this natural approach which is systematized by Somatics Exercises. These types of exercises have been prescribed to successfully get people out of pain, stiffness and cramps or muscle spasms.
Your brain is showing what needs to be done but of course we normally “react” by pulling away from any pain.
Learning how to go with it, is what sets you free even though it’s counter to what we’ve been led to do.
Once you get the hang of Somatics, in which the goal, like stretching, is to lengthen the muscles, it’s simply achieved by the brain rather than than forcing a muscle.
Preventing injuries can be helped if the muscles are more relaxed in the first place. So it’s obvious, why make things tighter with brawn when you can use your brain to change how much activity and rate of contraction your muscles have to live with… it’s always easier to move if you’re less stiff, compensated, and not holding on for dear life in those exquisite moments of the mystery and misery of a cramp or muscle spasm.
Somatics with the Eagles
Posted by: | CommentsWhidbey Island is a great place to visit and heal your self.
Who knows when you’ll come across one of the locals…
Join us on Saturday afternoon for three hours of feeling the bliss that you can create by using your wonderful brain to move you in easy, gentle and novel ways.
Pandiculate your way to health and soar like an eagle again.
Somatic Tips
Posted by: | CommentsHow well you move, plays a roll in how well you feel. Learning to move with greater ease isn’t always easy. If you’re used to giving it your all or moving with more force than is necessary, chances are your over doing it unconsciously… and this could be the cause of your discomforts.
*Move with Less Effort*
A practice in moving easily is simply accomplished by dialing down your effort in moving. Being more precise with your movements involves lessening your effort so your muscles work efficiently instead of shuddering with extra effort.
Noticing where you contract from or the area you are using during a movement may not initially be clear. When you contract and shorten your muscles, take notice to the areas where your contract, the level of effort, the feeling, the sensations aroused or lack thereof.
As you contract your muscles, others are normally and naturally lengthening in response. It’s not necessary to force the length, rather your observation of it happening, deepens your awareness and your coordination in what moves what and where and how it moves.
*Be Aware of your release*
If you can merely observe the release of your contraction, you’ll notice the resulting length is accomplished without force.
If you force the length, a signal is generated by your brain to re-contract the tissues afterwards. Traditional forms of stretching actually produce tighter muscles according to the latest research.
To have the flexibility of a cat, the agility of a panther, and the ability to jump like a gazelle requires you to follow their lead. Animals engage their motor cortex through the process of a series of pandiculations.
*First thing in the morning*
Since animals self-correct throughout their day, it would be wise once again to follow their lead. When healthy, they engage the process first thing in the morning, every day. There’s their key.
Who else is going to ready your muscles for you each new day? Animals are wise enough to do it first. They are not checking the emails nor will you find a way to ready to yourself in your emails, unless of course, you happen to be receiving the Somatic Classes via email.
The natural process of engaging your motor cortex is always available to you… I know you have other things to attend to.
It’s just a process and as far as I know most of us have the ability to engage in the process since it primarily activates your motor cortex, which has been called your highest learning center.
You can continue to learn and generate new brain cells. Neurogenesis and neural plasticity perhaps becomes of interest as you age, unless you already engage the process everyday. If you are, yoohoo, you’re way ahead of most people as the mass understanding of this process hasn’t reached them, yet!
Somatics is merely applied neurogenesis.
*Pay attention to how you move*
Practicing Somatics is a matter of paying attention to how you manipulate yourself in the field of gravity. How you contend or float in the field of gravity is known to you by the signals your body generates. You can become more One with the field of gravity. No this isn’t airy fairy stuff, I mean you can continually fight gravity and keep kicking yourself in the pants, which would naturally lead to tighter hamstrings and a sore back.
*Use your self-correcting brain and mind*
The power lies in your brain to self-correct, adapt accordingly, merely by spending some time in your self. When you practice the variety of movements which are offered in the Somatics classes or through your understanding and application of Somatics, your brain feeds off of these differentiated patterns to present you with possibilities of change in your habit of movement.
Your habitual and repetitive patterns lead to some of the negative results you encounter over and over.
*Differentiate your movements*
Differentiation provides an avenue to more integrated, more coordinated, more balanced and efficient movement itself. You’ll know how, when, and at what speed, in order to move more cohesively.
So as I said, learning to move with greater ease isn’t easy, but it’s very simple once you get the hang of the process.
The antidote for discomfort, pain, aches, soreness, etc, lies between your ears.
Engaging the process is not under your nose, it’s in it.
